1. Copyright Notice
In the description herein for embodiments of the present invention, a portion of the disclosure recited in the specification contains material, which is subject to copyright protection. Computer program source code, object code, instructions, text, or other functional information that is executable by a machine may be included in tables, figures or in other forms. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction of the specification as filed in the Patent and Trademark Office. Otherwise, all copyright rights are reserved.
2. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention relate, in general, to representing and accessing topological information of a network. More specifically, embodiments of the invention relate to a method and a system for a generalized representation of the topology for testing network resources.
3. Description of the Background Art
A network is a collection of interconnected network elements. The network elements include devices, interfaces, and communication links. The devices, such as routers, switches, and computers, are used to interact with other network elements. The interfaces enable a device to interact with the other devices in the network. Examples of interfaces include a Local Area Network (LAN) port in a router, a Wide Area Network (WAN) port in a router or a Network Interface Card (NIC) in a computer. The communication links facilitate the interactions between the various network elements.
The physical and logical relationship of the network elements is referred to as ‘network topology’. The physical relationship refers to the physical arrangement of the network elements within the network, such as a star topology, a mesh topology or a bus topology. The logical relationship refers to the method used by the network elements to communicate across the corresponding physical topology. The logical topology describes the network protocol used by the network elements. Ethernet protocol and LocalTalk protocol are examples of logical bus topology protocols. The network topology facilitates monitoring the performance of the network. For example, the logical topology can be used to figure out the maximum possible transfer rate of data between two routers in the network. The network topology is also used to figure out problems like bottleneck in transmission of data, or below par performance of a network element. Such problems have an effect on the performance characteristics of the network.
The performance characteristics of the network are identified by testing the network elements and interfaces (collectively, resources) available in the network. Resource testing can be automated with the use of scripts. Resource tests are often conducted by service-providers or vendors of a network element in their network to maintain performance and identify potential or actual operational problems. The network of the service-provider is herein after referred to as a test network. The service-provider, or a vendor of a network element deployed in the network, often replicate the topology of the network to understand the operational demands on the resource in the network. The replicated environment includes the devices, interfaces, and the communication links required for testing the resource. The replicated environment is referred to as a ‘test-bed’, which is created within the test network.
The method of creation of the test-bed involves two steps. The first step is identifying the operational environment of the resource in the network. The second step is identification of the network elements necessary for creation of the test-bed.
The first step requires obtaining the network topology information of the network. Often times, the network topology is described in a specific format that is not readily portable between the owner of the network and the service provider or the vendor. The topology format employed for each network often depends on its functional capabilities and requirements of the network, which often results in the topology information that describes the network not being compatible with the test-bed. To set up the test bed, service providers and venders must often manually draw the network topology and import it to their test bed. This creates difficulty in information reuse, results in redundant efforts to automate the process for creating the test-bed, and creates a large number of process inefficiencies. Further, a hand drawn topology is a time consuming task and error-prone.
In the past, there have been efforts to provide a way to describe network topology in a unified manner. For example, one approach has been to use a unified network topology where representations of a number of networks are combined to depict one network comprising multiple sub-networks. This helps in sharing of topology information within the combined networks. However, since the test-bed is different from the network, it is common that the unified network topology is still not compatible with the test-bed.
The second step involves comparison of the identified operational environment with the resources of the test network. The identified operational environment is used to customize the scripts that are used for resource testing. Some of the network elements from the test network are selected based on the comparison. Conventionally, this is performed manually by script integrators. Script integrators are individuals who prepare the test-bed based on the operational environment of the resource. The script integrators manually identify the network elements of the test network that will best match the operating environment of the resource. Understandably, this method is also both time consuming and error-prone.